Colleen Mondor's Blog, page 20

New Column with Christopher Barzak & the best father ever

My February column is up and includes Christopher Barzak's collection Before and Afterlives. I was struck while writing my review by one particular passage in "The Map of Seventeen" as a father and daughter discuss her brother's homosexual relationship:

"Are you okay with that?" I asked.

"Can't not be," he said. "Not an option."

"Who says?"

"I need no authority figure on that," said Dad. "You have a child and, no matter what, you love them. That's just how it is."

"That's not how it is for everyone, Dad."

"Well thank the dear Lord I'm not everyone," he said. "Why would you want to live like that, with all those conditions on love?"

I didn't know what to say. He'd shocked me into silence the way I could always shock him into laughter. We had that effect on each other, like yin and yang. My dad's a good guy, likes the simpler life, seems pretty normal. He wears Allis Chalmers tractor hats and flannel shirts and jeans. He likes oatmeal and meatloaf and macaroni and cheese. Then he opens his mouth and turns into Buddha. I swear to God, he'll do it when you're least expecting it. I don't know sometimes whether he's like me and Tommy, hiding something different about himself but just has all these years of experience to make himself blend in. Like maybe he's an angel beneath that sun-browned, beginning-to-wrinkle human skin. "Do you really feel that way?" I asked. "It's one thing to say that, but is it that easy to truly feel that way?"

"Well it's not what you'd call easy, Meg. But It's what's right. Most of the time doing what's right is more difficult than doing what's wrong."

Price of the book is worth it right there for that exchange, don't you think? Magic.

See the full column here - it's all about Alice in Wonderland, selkies, mermaids and princesses. None of these books are what you're thinking, promise.

A bazillion books I saw last weekend & want you to know about

Friends, Romans, Countrymen....I am tired. I think it will take me a full week to recover from ALA Midwinter madness. If one must be tired though, this was a killer way to exhaust myself! In lieu of a thoughtful post (and I do have some brewing), here is a rundown of many books I caught a glimpse of that I wanted to share. (Please note though that there were several titles already on my radar - especially from First Second, Chronicle & Abrams, that I don't mention here. More on those in upcoming columns.)

1. The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles de Lint, illustrated by Charles Vess. I saw this at the Little Brown breakfast and it is stunning; an illustrated MG Appalachian fairy tale that is a perfect match between author and artist. From the copy: In this whimsical, original folktale written and illustrated throughout in vibrant full color by two celebrated masters of modern fantasy, a young girl's journey becomes an enchanting coming-of-age story about magic, friendship, and the courage to shape one's own destiny.

2. Mister Orange translated from Dutch by Laura Watkinson, illus by Jenni Desmond. An intriguing sounding MG title set in NYC during WWII about a boy who takes over his older brother's delivery job and meets an eccentric customer called "Mister Orange" who is ultimately revealed as the painter Piet Mondrian. Their meetings and conversations provide the coming-of-age element to the story - all about life, war and the "freedom to create".

3. Weird Sea Creatures by Erich Hoyt. Major cool illustrated title on the animals that live in the depths of the ocean. The photos are amazing; I honestly can not get enough of this kind of thing, it's endlessly fascinating. (Ages 10 & up but really there's no age for this kind of book.)

4. My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks! A collection of stories and advice from more than 100 teens who faced this crisis and the experts who helped them. Not a novel, not a candy-colored vision of illness but the real deal. Should be mandatory reading for everyone who seeks to romanticize disease.

5. Archangel by Andrea Barrett. I'm cheating a bit with this one as the book was not physically available yet, but I chatted with the WW Norton rep all about it and I'm just delighted to see Barrett return to the short story. From the copy: The first motorized bicycles, the first aeroplanes, the first amateur studies of genetics--twelve-year-old Constantine Boyd has his eyes opened to an unfolding world of scientific discovery in "The Investigators." In "The Ether of Space," "The Island," and "The Particles," young women and men passionate about the workings of the natural world experience the shock waves of Einstein's, Darwin's, and Mendel's work. And in "Archangel," Constantine Boyd returns as a soldier on the desolate fringes of Russia in 1919, where even the newly discovered magic of X-ray technology fails to offer the insight that might protect humans from the stupidity of war.

6. Brewster by Mark Slouka. An adult novel that looks to have crossover potential for older teens, the tagline here is about "two teenage boys and their hopes to escape from a dead-end town." It's set in 1968 and holds comparisons to Richard Russo and Andre Dubus III. I'm very interested by how common the theme sounds because it is something so many of us feel as teenagers but so few authors seem to capture well.

7. The Lego Minifigure Character Encyclopedia. My son is eleven; he screamed when I called him from the Exhibition Hall floor to tell him this was due out this spring.

8. Basher History: The U.S. Presidents. This is out now and is as good as the other classic Basher titles. Some of the YALSA teens wandered by when I was in the Kingfisher booth and they went nuts over the Basher books - scooping up posters of the Periodic Table and calling their friends over to see them. My geeky self was delighted and I'll be getting this book, like so many of the others, for my son for sure.

9. September Girls by Bennett Madison. Bennett is a favorite author of mine and I've heard good things about this one - it's one of the few ARCs I sought out over the weekend. This summer beach novel centers around teenage Sam and the mysterious beautiful girls he meets. It's a mermaid story but also about "oblivious parents, sibling rivalry, first loves..." It's called darkly imaginative and painfully honest - this just might be the mermaid tale I've been waiting for.

10. East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Jackie Morris. This jewel of a book (and I hope to review it along with de Lint's title in some kind of column down the line), is as lush and beautiful as it gets. From the copy: From the moment she saw him, she knew the bear had come for her. How many times had she dreamt of the bear.... Now, here he was, as if spelled from her dreams. "I will come with you, Bear," she said. It is the beginning of an extraordinary journey for the girl. First to the bears secret palace in faraway mountains, where she is treated so courteously, but where she experiences the bears unfathomable sadness, and a deep mystery...As the bears secret unravels, another journey unfolds... a long and desperate journey, that takes the girl to the homes of the four Winds and beyond, to the castle east of the sun, west of the moon.

11. Doll Bones by Holly Black. I have no idea how I did not know about this one - no idea at all - but here it is due out from McElderry in May and it involves scary dolls. (GAH!!!!) For MG readers, here's the description: Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they've been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her.

But they are in middle school now. Zach's father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she's been having dreams about the Queen and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.

Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen's ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?

12. Fifty Machines That Changed the Course of History by Eric Chaline. Part of a four book series that includes animals, minerals and the upcoming plants (which was stolen from their booth), these are very similar in format to DK or Thames & Hudson titles in the best way. As DK does so well, there is great information, short chapters and heavily illustrated pages but like Thames & Hudson, these have a more scholarly old world feel that makes them great for older teens and adults. Even the pages felt wonderful; really something special.

13. There is a stack of mysteries from Soho Press that is too much for here - I'm going to post a separate survey of them next week. If you love mysteries though, for adults or teens, you need to head over to their website and check them out.

14. And from the notes in my phone: Plague in the Mirror by Deborah Noyes, a time travel paranormal between the present day and 14th century Florence; Bad Girls, Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, etc. by Jane Yolen, a NF collection of short biographies and The Theory of Everything by JJ Johnson, about the longterm impact of grief. I was looking this one over and browsing the Peachtree booth when a librarian came up and positively raved about it. From the copy: Fifteen-year-old Sarah has been acting like a different person ever since she witnessed the gruesome accident that killed her best friend, Jamie. Sarah's grades are plunging, her sarcastic attitude is putting her family on edge, and she can't escape the feeling that life is random and meaningless. Sarah's turning point comes after she meets middle-aged Roy, who owns a Christmas tree farm where Sarah begins to work. Readers will easily relate to Sarah's use of cynicism as a defense mechanism -- her sharp-witted voice sets the tone for a story that's truly tragicomic. Equally entertaining are the hand-drawn graphs and diagrams that appear throughout (texts, stern lectures, tense silence, and breakfast constitute the bulk of a pie chart about Sarah's communication with her mother). The changes within Sarah are real and moving, and the open ending underscores the idea that although death may be certain, life is full of surprises.

15. I could go on and on and on but these are the standouts. More to follow as I go thru the Soho catalog and sort out the books reviewed in two recent issues of Booklist. Also, what I'm reading, what I'm reviewing and what I'm writing about (airplanes and mountains - big surprise).

ALA Midwinter report that is all about what I saw, what I ate, who I met & why Harper Collins is still the bane of my reviewing experience

1. There was the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, a killer hamburger, fabulous Vietnamese pineapple salad and Quesadillas served at the end of the longest walk in the world. Also lovely fruit (among other things) at the Little Brown breakfast.

2. As you can see, food was a reoccurring theme at ALA Midwinter.

3. Biggest Revelation: there is a ton of work that goes into being a librarian and the folks on those award/list committees are dedicated to an epic level.

4. Having said that, librarians also can put away a drink and apparently involve themselves in wild karaoke parties. (I was not there but I heard stories.)

5. Friday night, when the Exhibition Hall opens, was....insane. I was warned that it would be wild but nothing can prepare you for the sight of grown-ups plowing into each other to obtain a copy of Rick Yancey's latest. I can only figure it was some kind of crowd induced hysteria. Saturday, thankfully, was much much calmer.

6. On Saturday I commenced with my Master Plan to visit every publishing rep I knew via email and connect with them in person. Delightful chats commenced with Rachel and Mindy at DK, Lara at Chronicle, and lots of other folks (especially in small press land). I also discovered that DK is releasing a book on Lego Minifigs this summer which pretty much has made my son's year. (I called him immediately, of course.)

7. Cringe-Worthy Moment: Sighting four-inch high heels on the convention floor. (All I could hear in my head was "WHAT NOT TO WEAR!!!")

8. Best Literary Face-Off: The divine Liz Burns and divine Jackie Parker exchanging radically different opinions on Grave Mercy. Hysterical does not begin to describe it. (Kelly Jensen and I were eating french fries dipped in milkshake during this discussion.) (Don't mock us; it was tasty!)

9. Most Uncomfortable Moment #1: Introducing myself at the Algonquin booth and asking about their new YA imprint only to have the young rep respond "What exactly is a Bookslut?" I started to explain the site and then just...couldn't.



"You've never heard of the literary website Bookslut?"

"No. Are you new?"

[ARE WE NEW????] I had no words.

"Um, is there someone else here I can speak to?"

He turns, nudges lady behind him: "This lady is from something called Bookslut. She wanted to talk about the YA imprint."

Lady steps forward, hand outstretched. "BOOKSLUT! We love Bookslut!"

[Thank you, God.]

Rational, wonderful conversation followed.

10. Most Uncomfortable Moment #2: Five minutes in the Harper Collins Kids booth waiting to be noticed. Taking notes, tweeting, the only person in the booth with four reps who talked to each other and never spoke to me. After I walked out I received a tweet from a blogger friend who sent me to the HC Adult booth with the name of a rep to ask for. She was very nice, walked me to the kid side and introduced me to a rep (who had been standing there all along). I asked about Bennett Madison's upcoming September Girls and was quickly given an ARC. That's when I mentioned I had reviewed some of his other books, was a fan of his work, and..... she said nothing. "Have a nice day," she chirped, and walked away.

11. Nope, I didn't get her business card. (I consider myself damn lucky that I got the book.)

12. Every publisher (and agent and editor) should attend a Best Fiction for Young Adults Teen Feedback Session. Alternately shy and defiant, soft spoken and confident, these kids were amazing. They stood carefully in line, kept their comments under the 2 minutes allotted, gave their reasons for supporting or not supporting a title and more than once asserted themselves against the opinions of the adults around them. "No More Love Triangles!!" ("It's hard enough to find one person to love, let alone two!") "All Teenage Guys Are Not Jerks so please stop writing them that way!" "I was LIED TO by this cover!" and the mother of all shut downs for Amanda Hocking - including a damning quote from her nominated book - which prompted applause from the audience.

13. Adults don't know what it is like to be a teenager. We remember, but we don't know. Listening to some actual live feedback from teens is critical for anyone involved in the YA publishing industry.

14. And kudos to teen librarian Jackie Parker for wrangling this group of great kids together so they could share so much with all of us.

15. Did I mention Soho Press has a YA Mystery line now? More on this later but I spent several lovely moments with the crew there and am very much looking forward to seeing what they have to offer teen mystery fans.

16. Can someone explain to me when it became a thing for teen librarians to color their hair pink or purple or blue? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

17. Most Disturbing Thing I Saw All Weekend: Three women packing no fewer than 500 books into several extra large suitcases next to the Coat Check after the Exhibition Hall closed Saturday evening. They had about twenty tote and shopping bags full of books they were transferring to the suitcases. We all stood in line transfixed by the sight. I was tempted to take a picture but they looked pretty surly and I didn't think it was worth a confrontation to record the fact that they were greedy jerks. But still, it was pretty damn unbelievable.

18. Also Unbelievable: Someone stole four lovely hardcover books from Firefly Books (which has some great stuff) on Friday night. (Really - they stole Fifty Plants That Changed the World. REALLY.) Also, someone apparently stole the display copy of Code Name Verity from the Hyperion booth. (Took all the stars along with it as well.)

19. What.The.Fuck.

20. Best Moment: A long bookish discussion with Barry, Sara and Kate over Mexican food on Saturday night when we realized that if anyone was listening to our conversation they would think we were insane. The forty-five minute wait for a cab was no fun, but as we know now it is all due to Kate's curse, we accept that it is the price to be paid for her company. Just be warned that a dinner out with her will involve nearly freezing to death on a street corner later. :)

21. Three Fan Girl Moments: Cara Black at Soho Press, Ellen Datlow at the Horror Writers Assoc and Nancy Pearl, who I thanked for choosing my book last year for her NPR Summer Reading List. (She thanked me for writing it - can you imagine?!) All were simply wonderful.

22. Lessons Learned: Meeting in person is always a good thing; bookish people are funny as hell; free books make some folks go a wee bit crazy and bacon should never be put on a vegetarian burger. (It wasn't my burger, but trust me on this. It was WRONG.)

We've got a new quote on the cover for the paperback edition

...And I couldn't be more pleased. I've been reading Air & Space since I was 19; this is really a moment for me.

The addictive chaos of a department store job

The graphic novel Not My Bag follows the travails of a comic book artist and writer Sina Grace who took a department store job to cover some unexpected car accident related bills. His decision makes perfect sense and the logic behind it - holding down an undesirable job for the time it takes to get a grip on your finances - is really quite admirable. We've all worked for the man when we didn't want to and the book seems set up to share all of Grace's frustrations along with lots of on job snarkiness. But then the author throws a major curveball - he starts to like his job.

"Like" is actually not the right word here, more it's that he becomes seduced by the store and the people he works for. The competitiveness of department store employment is laid bare (did you have any idea how insane it is?), and Grace fell for it hook, line and sinker. He became a selling fool, dazzling his floor and department managers. Soon enough climbing up the department store ladder became the center of his life and his creative career is at first neglected and then pretty much completely ignored. Grace is dressing in Alexander McQueen and wooing shoppers, he's promised a shot at a great new department, he's going places!!!!

Well, as long as the only place he wants to go to is in the department store.

Bit by bit Grace shows how he fell to pieces, lost his focus and even got a little close to losing his patient and endearing boyfriend. The manipulative powers exhibited by his bosses are something to behold (if only they used their powers for good!) and all too soon he starts to go crazy in paranoid manipulation land as well and lashes out at his co-workers. Everything comes down to moving the merchandise, pleasing people who have no respect for him and winning points with those who are happily using and abusing him. It's a sick system but a crazy seductive one. You can see how Grace lost sight of his initial plan and how hard it was to walk away.

A note on the illustrations: the artwork is spare and direct and Grace excels at facial expressions, easily conveying all manner of subtle emotions - very well done. See also Gabrielle Gantz's review from last month over at The Contextual Life. Here's a bit:

All the melodrama of working in retail is on display in Not My Bag, from an evil boss whose nature is depicted through grotesque facial renderings to the silent competition of fellow coworkers. More importantly, however, Not My Bag is a warning, it shows what happens when one forgoes their passion and, at best, chases after someone else's dream.

Celebrating Democracy

One of my favorite lines:

"Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote."

Hell yeah, Mr. President. Hell yeah.

On "Battleborn" and no more happy endings

The short story collection Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins has gotten quite a bit of attention in the past few months and it was one of the books on my holiday list that showed up under the tree. (Yea for books for Christmas!) There are several very powerful stories in this collection, most notably "Ghost, Cowboys" about her father's membership in the Manson Family, but the overriding theme is that of disappointment. A lot of people die in Watkins's world, a lot have horrible relationships, a lot find only dead ends personally and professionally and pretty much overall every single story in this collection ends with a whimper of grimness.

It's not exactly a vision of a bold new day in America.

Please don't think I'm picking on Battleborn however, because there is nothing different in this book then a lot of others I've read lately. Heck, I'm the person who wrote a book with "Dead" in the title, so I'm as guilty of pessimism as the next person. (Though writing about aviation without writing about crashes is pretty much impossible.) What struck me about Battleborn though was that the unhappiness is not due to a sudden change in circumstance - an accident or unplanned twist of misfortune - but rather to the choices made by the characters and their unwillingness to make other choices then to change the situation.

You have a young man who visits a bordello in Nevada and falls for a prostitute, foolishly thinking he is in love. The story is about how she is willfully manipulating him in the hope of financial gain and how the manager of the facility is horribly lonely. No one is happy in this story and no one knows how to be happy.

In another a woman breaks up with her unpleasant boyfriend only to discover she is pregnant and then meets her former boyfriend (the nice guy whose baby she aborted) and thinks about having this new baby. No one is happy in this story either. (Except maybe her sister but she's not the point.)

There is a couple who goes camping and the wife is trying to figure out if she is happy as a wife and mother, the pregnant teenage girl who is discovered in the wild after a drunken party and might be impregnated by her father (I really wasn't sure) but goes back with him anyway and obviously is not happy. (I really couldn't figure out why the cops weren't called on this one but I was too busy being glad the dog didn't die to dwell on it.) And there's the woman who tells her lover about how she peer pressured a friend into having sex with multiple guys they did not know when they were in high school and how the two of them stopped being friends afterwards and the other girl ended up in an abusive relationship and clearly did not live happily ever after. (This was probably the saddest story ever because the whole thing happened out of manipulation bred by boredom - they could have gone to a damn movie instead.)

The story I had the most trouble with was a historic one about gold mining brothers. One plans to get rich and return to marry his girl, who will wait for him - of course. They nearly die getting to the gold fields, lose all their equipment, struggle to find any gold, the girl doesn't write, the brother goes mad, innocent people are killed (bonus - they are Chinese killed due to their ethnicity!) and the sane brother flees without ever knowing what happens to the crazed sibling he left behind. Jack London and everybody else did this already and better, but the point is clear - no one got happy trying to get rich in the gold fields and the girl will never wait for you. (Really - is there a story where the girl EVER waits like she promises?)

Again, in all these stories the writing is powerful, the characters well drawn, the sentences elegant. It's all the good stuff you expect in literary fiction. But honestly, when I was done reading this book I couldn't reach for a fluffy romance novel fast enough. I was tired of all the negativity and it was really wearing me down. I needed something hopeful stat.

What bothers me about so much contemporary literature is that it seems that serious work has to mean unhappiness. We have turned so hard against unearned happy endings (the princess model) that to get respect you have to show the failures of the American dream - the ways in which life beats us up again and again and again. No one just meets the person of their dreams and buys a nice little house and loves their job and enjoys themselves. Can you think of a non-genre title where this happens? Can you think of something lauded as serious literature where just nice pleasant things happen to the characters*? Are we so jaded we don't even want make believe people to be happy?

Am I the only one who wonders about this or still believes that happily-ever-after is an okay thing to think about?

*The only one that comes to mind for me right away is Glaciers by Alexis Smith, the wonderful novella from Tin House. It's thoughtful and written with great care but contains a definite measure of happiness that really makes it heartwarming.

Because birds need books too

Thanks to David Abrams and his best of 2012 reading list, I now have added several titles to my own wish list including Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer, Misfit by Adam Braver and Dust to Dust by Benjamin Busch. Be sure to check out David's entire post - it's fantastic.

Amanda Palmer will be speaking at TED next month and in typical Amanda fashion blogged about it and asked her readers to weigh in on her speech ideas. The comments really must be read - tons of fascinating stuff there about how a creative person connects with her audience and what the audience values the most and how the internet and social media work for all of that. I'm still thinking about this and how it applies to authors in particular, but direct you to check out Amanda's blog right now.

Relatedly, Amanda's husband Neil Gaiman has a gut wrenching post up about the death of his dog Cabal. Read it at your own risk because the tears will flow.

This look by The Atlantic at scholarly articles written about Sex In The City (and especially the Carrie Bradshaw character) has got to be seen to be believed. Here's a bit:

Dana Heller's American Studies article "Sex and the Series: Paris, New York, and Post-National Romance" analyzes the sixth-season episode "An American Girl in Paris (Part Deux)" and declares it a modern manifestation of early American literature's "Indian captivity narrative" (you know--young, virginal white girl gets kidnapped by bloodthirsty Indians, then is saved by other heroic white people and/or the grace of God). Paris stands in for the "evil" Native Americans, Carrie plays the helpless, innocent captive, and Mr. Big is, uh... God.

Oh, how I laughed! I laughed and laughed and laughed!!

[Post pic of Mark Dion's "Maple Tree Library for Studious Birds". I honestly can not get enough of his work.]

Christopher Barzak's Mad Tea Party

I'm reading Chris Barzak's upcoming collection Before and Afterlives for my February column and enjoying several of these stories a great deal. There is one in particular that really shook me (in a good way) though, "A Mad Tea Party". This is short, only eight pages, but is about the best real world use of the Alice and Wonderland mythology that I have come across. It's intense, brutal almost, and yet includes little more than the main character, (also called Alice), as she deals with her mother's death. All the expected figures run through her memory from the White Rabbit to the Cheshire Cat but none of them appear as you expect. It's just wildly creative and wholly unexpected and deeply eerie. It's real, and maybe that is why it is so very bloody disturbing.

But really, I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this story at all. I'll try harder.

Adult Alice has returned to her childhood home after learning via a brief phone call from her sister that their mother is dead. Alone in the house she finds herself in a destructive frenzy, destroying things, including many tea cups, that mattered to her mother as thoroughly and completely as possible. Her sister arrives, is shocked, stunned and then terrified, and flees. Alice cleans up the mess and ponders her sister's reaction. This is a mad tea party, she thinks and there is only room at the table for one.

The next day is the funeral, with her appalling and likely larcenous brother-in-law in attendance and then the after-funeral party, which Alice does not attend. (Did they miss her? Probably not.) And then there is Alice alone again in her mother's house, wishing desperately for a cup of tea, hearing the echoes of her mother's voice, realizing she is all alone with that voice now, without her tea, with her tears. The reader is left with a vision of Alice - of all the world's Alices - with their Red Queens hovering over their shoulders, with the terror of that moment, with madness as the only escape route possible.

Do you see it now? Can you imagine it? Nothing is obvious in this story, except the tea and the broken cat and the man in white with his watch and the plunge down a dark hole that ends in the house. And then the tears that could create an endless river. Remember Alice's tears? I never paid much attention to them but here - those tears are serious stuff here and Barzak makes sure you notice them and understand just why Alice was so damn sad.

There are several stories in Before and Afterlives that I will mention in my formal review but "A Mad Tea Party" is the one that I've been thinking about the most the past few days. Barzak does a lot with this story and he never once makes you think he has stolen from Lewis Carroll or cheated the reader in any way. He gives you Alice raw and emotionally beaten in his story - he gives you what we all suspected could happen but never knew for sure.

Remember what Neil Gaiman did for Susan in "The Problem of Susan"? (Come on Narnia fans - you know what I'm talking about.) "A Mad Tea Party" is a bit like that, just as effective and just as devastating. Short, not sweet, but pure magic, plain and simple.

Reading around the edges in January

Somehow I missed that Nicholas Christopher has a new book just out, Tiger Rag. I'm a huge fan of his work (have you read A Trip to the Stars? Go - read it now!) Tiger Rag is about a family mystery, a woman whose life is falling apart, some mother/daughter bonding, a road trip and - the best - the life and legacy of Jazz great Buddy Bolden. I have no idea when I'll be fitting this one in but it will happen, and soon. (See Paste Magazine's review here.)

In the massive "what to look forward to in 2013" post at The Millions, I saw lots of interesting sounding books 1 but it was in the comments that I learned Andrea Barrett has a new short story collection due out in August: Archangel. Her Ship Fever remains a life-changing read for me (and the first time my family realized that my Irish heritage likely came through Canada at some point as well). Barrett never disappoints. Ever. The blending of science and histories in her stories is beautiful to discover, and it sounds like more of the stellar same in Archangel.

Also, A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytel and The Pink Hotel both sound like possible older teen crossovers for my column. If I can't get my hands on copies, then I'll try to give them a shout out at least at titles to check out.

I'm reading Christopher Barzak's upcoming collection, Before and Afterlives, and Margo Lanagan's latest, Brides of Rollrock Island, both for my February column which somehow morphed into fairy tale-ish/interstitial-ish titles. (I have no idea but it has finally come together so I'm not complaining). March is for sure coming-of-age, April is nonfiction, May is adventure/run for your life.

There. I know what I'm doing!

Tomorrow I write about lost birds and lost pilots. I hope it comes together on paper like it has in my head.

1Apparently there are no books to look forward to in the SFF genre, or mystery or romance or YA in the land of The Millions. This should not surprise me, but, sigh - it does. Also - mention Marisha Pessl's upcoming book but not Andrea Barrett's? REALLY?